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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Creating Eye Appeal...

Fresh flowers in the dining room..

This whole week, I have devoted my energy to transforming our home into a show house...

Its been quite a learning experience, and its not over yet.

Our real estate agent sent us Mary Poppins (that's not her real name!) a few days ago, she specializes in "staging homes" for selling, and folks, she really knows her stuff... She handed me a sheet of paper and told me to take notes. We cruised from room to room and she dictated whilst I wrote all the little secrets that make a home beautiful and desirable... I learned quickly about what to remove, and what to keep, how to present, and organize ... for example today, in order to make our walk in closet more attractive to a would-be-buyer, I arranged all of my hanging clothes in order of color, I was surprised at what a difference it made to the whole space.. Small things can make a huge overall difference..

We are selling our home and hoping to move into a bigger house, but we'll see what happens. I am definitely from the camp of one step at a time. I find that the more "things" I have to worry about the more I stress..., and the more I stress, the more unhappy I make myself. Some people are worried that we might sell right away, and where would we go? Again, I cannot worry about something that hasn't happened..

Instead I am simply focusing on the tasks in front of me. This week, I have gone through every room in the house and decreased the contents of each room by at least fifty percent... I've sorted and packed and organized..., and you know what? I am astonished by just how much "stuff" has been "stuffed" into our little house..., and I'm amazed by how much we still have left even after the sorting!

Packing up a families various accoutrements in order to move is proving to be quite eye opening. After removing so many "treasures," I'm finding that the spaciousness has created a sense of appeal that is very gentle to the eye and for some reason a lot less troubling! Having stuff means you have to take care of it, handle it, clean it, sometimes move it..., I didn't know it until now, but the weight of everything had become a burden.

Now I find myself loving every room in the house, whereas before I avoided nooks and crannies, (probably because they'd acquired a kind of negative energy) I now find myself pausing and just standing, feeling the flow of good energy circulating around me and through our home... (thank you Mary Poppins!)